


XXI - The World

by ioucos



Category: Hyper Light Drifter
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 10:52:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8010823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ioucos/pseuds/ioucos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Desperate hunger for progress; a loss of self, a narrow path traveled.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 0 - The Fool

**Author's Note:**

> My first real fanfic. Decided to cross-post this from my Tumblr.

_Harnessing a great wellspring, a perfect immortal cell was crafted, to be imbued within all sentient life. A noble goal, though such a power terrified others and brought ruin, as its purpose was transmogrified. The abhorrent cell still festers deep in the chambers of this world._

The Magician awoke to the pattering of dripping leaves, and the thick smell of petrichor. They blinked twice, observing their surroundings. They sat back against the stone face of an ancient moss-overcome statue, displaying the face of a large cat, of some description. A proud lion, perhaps, or an all-knowing panther. A campfire before the Magician crackled, warming them.

Slowly, the Drifter rose, exuding a hacking cough born of some sort of occult congestion. They felt a peculiar substance rising in their stomach. Looking around, the Magician silently noted they were upon the shore of a swamped lake. A twisting and turning within the very core of the Drifter brought them to the edge of this shore. They expelled the rising fluid into the waters, spitting it out with several additives, namely traces of bile and blood. The predominately pink stuff seemed to dissolve in the waters, twisting and churning of its own accord, seeming almost malignant in nature. The Drifter grimaced, spitting into the waters, before turning away.

A series of clicks and whirrs momentarily brought the attention of the Magician to an object floating around their head. It was merely the droid that served as their only companion in this mysterious and shadow-steeped world. The Drifter looked past the campfire, in what they estimated to be a southward direction.

They resolved to travel onwards, toward progress.


	2. I - The Magician

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At this point, everything essentially switches to drabbles, up until the final chapter.

Incoherent murmurs tore down through the streets like lightning. 

The word was that a blue-skinned humanoid had been carried into town limply by the place’s savior. Both were in search of some fabled immortal cell that could cure one plague or another. The alcoholic over in an eastern alley was apprehensive. What good had come to those with blue skin in this place? The man had only caught a glimpse of the two. While the populace remained silent as the guardian strode through, their departure brought hateful whispers with it. Another blue-skinned one, in this town! 

He grabbed another bottle.


	3. V - The Hierophant

The Drifter strode up the stairs, chants of the cult of the zealous ringing above. They had come seeking a fragment of the abyssal key, and they would leave with it - whether by trial or by fire. The winds of the winding ridge bit at them, maddened squawking ever more prominent. The stairs leveled off quite abruptly, and the Drifter got a glimpse of a body being seared to ash under power of a curious rift.

The hall of sacrifices; a dangerous potential.

The incinerator stared at the Drifter; a false hierophant.

The Drifter gripped their sword tightly, awaiting them.


	4. VIII -  Justice

An Emperor gurgled, wounded. The Magician drifted through eons of hyper-light the best they could to avoid the raining glass and burning flame about the innards of the overgrown temple.

The Drifter expected but a few more exchanges to finally deal out demise to the murderous frog.

The hideous thing belched forth a number of twisted organisms, inundated with writhing tendrils, in a spray of aureate bile. The things leapt at the Drifter, and they responded with an unnatural slash and kick. The venomous horrors slammed into the Emperor, and thusly slew it.

The Drifter spat blood onto the ground.


	5. IX - The Hermit

Freedom. A Tanooki soldier, sealed away in hard crystal for indefinite eons, collapsed to the damp forest earth. Mind still racing with the horrors of war, the soldier leapt forth, alert to the end. He looked about, confused. All was frozen in a moment of crisis, with none left to tell tales of war. Tears came to the soldier’s eyes as the truth of what had occurred sunk in. His family was either slain or frozen, his unit was assuredly gone, and all he loved annihilated. All he fought for.

And yet, he was free. What a price to pay.


	6. X - Fortune

The square elevator pad descended into the earth with a hiss, casting back the veil of ignorance on a small rectangular chamber. The Drifter peered within, naught but decomposing corpses staring back at them. A pink light shone from the end of the hall.

Within moments, the bounty was reached. The Drifter blinked twice, insides roiling passively with disease. A black diamond in the ground, with a latch affixed to the head. The Magician twisted the latch, and pulled it outward. Hissing, as if refusing to leave, a glowing abyssal key emerged from the device.

They were fortuitous this day.


	7. XII - The Hanged Man

A general, the last general, awoke from their accursed trance with the hiss of unlocking machinery. Glaring about suspiciously, the mad general drew their blade, encrusted in a hard crystal, the stuff of fables.

Footsteps pattered upon stairs before the depths of the great chamber. The last general had smelt their ilk before. A Drifter. In the pale light of the world above, the Hanged Man observed his comrades, sealed for eons in a crystalline prison. He scowled, readying his zaliska. He smelt a great sickness encroaching upon his domain, mere meters away.

This, he decided, would be resolved immediately.


	8. XIII - Death

A jackal with a shining light about its head observed a worldly domain from the depths of a fading eternal wellspring of power. In the lands above, a Magician frantically searched for a panacea. If the jackal could sigh in its constant battle of wills with the abyssal judgement, it would have. A sorrowful fate indeed was that of the Magician.

On the bridge of consciousness and control, the jackal felt it. The Drifter had made a fatal gaffe, so to speak. Power flooded into the jackal upon this termination, enough to wrest control.

Sacrifice for resurrection.

Anubis despised it.


	9. XIV - Temperance

The dirk crumpled to the ground, groaning. The Drifter removed their blade from the bloodied chest, and looked up, trying their hardest to ignore the deed. Two tubes filled with pink fluid caught their eye.

They were both of equal size, though different content. On the right, a dirk clad in the very same uniform as the slain one beside the Drifter. They were the backbone of the army of old. To the left, a blue skinned humanoid, in a similar uniform.

The Drifter thought to their own blue skin, and questioned if they were as different as they thought.


	10. XVI - The Tower

The Drifter emerged from the chilled earth, exhausted. The archer of the laboratory had been slain. There was but one thing to accomplish in the depths of the barren wastelands of the south.

Raise the tower.

The Magician looked about, searching. The top face of an absolutely monolithic square pillar of stone poked out from the earth, inert and dull. Striding over to it, the Drifter paused, taking in a deep breath. Then, they placed their hand upon the device; it began to rumble immediately afterward. The thing shot up into the sky, triumphant.

_Only one door left to open._


	11. XX - Judgement

It was beneath the shining beacon of safety the Magician had considered as refuge for quite some time. The gates to the abyss were merely sitting in the center of town, glimmering. People had used it as a town square for longer than the Drifter had been there.

Descending into the enigmatic citadel, the Drifter’s stomach churned. A roiling foulness encroached upon their windpipe. The Drifter swallowed it down the best they could, as if such an act could keep terminal illness in check. As the glowing platform possessing the Drifter’s current position like a covetous goblin locked into the architecture below, they could stomach it no longer. They turned, and spat forth a surreptitious blend of blood and a peculiar pink slime, for which there was no explanation. There needed not be an explanation.

The substance splattered across the stone of the ancient prison of knowledge and hidden mysteries, sinking through, or so it appeared.

~

It was not the first time the Magician questioned whether or not they would leave an empty room alive, but it would be the last.

This, the Drifter knew upon merely entering the room, for good or for ill. Shadows twisting and chuckling in those liminal corners beyond vision, the Drifter saw it.

An immortal cell, festering in the deep chambers of the earth.

Staring in awe, the Magician observed as the solid metal curtains of obfuscation crawled to the sides in retreat, both figuratively and literally. The glowing cell was held in place by moss-coated beams of a dark metal, gleaming in its infinite light.

They extended a hand forward, with intent to brush a finger on the mechanism. The darkness rose forth in return, coalescing.

~

The temple crumbling about them, the Drifter hacked and coughed, the pink substance readily dripping from their mouth. A jackal sorrowfully glanced at the Drifter, before trailing off, back into the entrance to the foul prison. Glowing energy and gases spewed from the cracked cell as the Drifter rushed down the hall as fast as they could, occasionally stopping to let out a hacking cough saturated by blood, the ruins crumbling around the Drifter all the while.

They reached a statue; a lion, a panther? The Drifter did not know. All they did know was that this place was eerily familiar, and it unnerved them, whilst simultaneously providing a sort of comfort. The Drifter grabbed at the stone of the statue nonetheless, buckling. Slowly, they dragged their own body to the stone monolith, and settled on the earth below. Their vision darkened as they locked eyes with the jackal, staring at it across an open flame.

They regarded each other with silent certainty, taking solace in each others’ presences, for they would be the last things they ever saw.

**Author's Note:**

> Criticism is not only appreciated, but recommended. Thanks for reading.


End file.
